Women's Studies in Communication
Volume 30. Number 1. Spring 2007
From Hunting Magic to Shamanism: Interpretations of
Native American Rock Art and the Contemporary Crisis
in Masculinity
Richard A. Rogers
Northern Arizona University
This essay examines two prominent models for the interpretation of Native American
rock art, highlighting projections of Euro-American gender ideologies and tensions over
masculinity onto (pre)historic cultures. Specifically, the figure of the Native American
shaman models masculine power as symbolic and spiritual, not physical, yet linked to
a virile heterosexuality. By identifying discursive homologies, this centering of a
primitive, spiritual masculinity is understood as a response to the Euro-American "crisis
of masculinity." Keywords: gender, homology, masculinity. Native American culture,
primitive, rock art, shamanism.
JVluch of the increasing literature on masculinity focuses on the "crisis of
masculinity." Gail Bederman, for example, analyzes the crisis of middleclass Anglo-American masculinity circa 1900, identifying its sources in
shifting patterns of work, threats from Others (women, working class, and
racial minorities), and tensions over masculinity as physical strength
versus self-mastery. Whatever the origins and regardless of the "reality" of
the crisis, "working class and immigrant men [.. .] seemed to possess a
virility and vitality which decadent white middle-class men had lost"
(Bederman 14). Similarly, many analyses of the contemporary crisis in
Euro-American masculinity point to shifts in work and economics: "Foreign investment, corporate flight, downsizing, and automation have suddenly left members of the working class without a steady family wage,
which [. . .] has left many white working-class men feeling emasculated
and angry" (Fine et al. 53). Susan Faludi also highlights the role of work,
focusing on a loss of "utilitarian masculinity" which "required that a man
wrest something out of the raw materials of the physical world" (85) and
that his work he "critical to society" (86). Not only blue collar but also
Richard A. Rogers (Ph.D., University of Utah, 1994) is an Associate Professor of Speech
Communication at Northern Arizona University. Earlier versions of this paper were
presented to the Organization for Research on Women and Communication, Western
States Communication Association, Albuquerque, NM, February 2004, and the Women's Studies Division, Western Social Science Association, Salt Lake City, UT, April
2004.
Richard A. Rogers 79
white collar masculinity is under siege by the corporate feminization of
(male) professionals. Karen Ashcraft and Lisa Flores write, "whereas
corporations have long supplied an institutional anchor for white, middleclass masculinity" (23), "contemporary discourse casts suspicion on the
white collar, as well as the notion that a man is defined by his professional
achievements and material possessions" (22).
Key themes in these discussions of the crisis in masculinity—tensions
between physical strength and mental/moral capacity as the basis for
masculinity, anxiety over the loss of virility due to changes in work, fear
of the incapacity to fulfill the role of breadwinner—are manifested in a
seemingly unrelated discursive terrain: archaeological interpretations of
the meaning and function of (pre)historic Native American rock art. These
parallels are especially apparent in an article focusing on gender, subsistence, and rock art in the Coso Range of southeastern California. Originally published in World Archaeology in 1994, David Whitley's "By the
Hunter, for the Gatherer: Art, Social Relations and Subsistence Change in
the Prehistoric Great Basin" presents a crisis of masculinity and its resolution.
Whitley explains that during a period in which big game hunting, a
male activity, became less important and gathering, a female activity,
became more important to the subsistence of the Numic cultures of the
Cosos, "the seed-eating Numic produced a massive corpus of art that,
taken literally at least, emphasized hunting, an activity of reduced importance to them" ("By the Hunter" 262).
With the transition to a less mobile, seed-oriented gathering
economy at c. AD 1200, it must be inferred that the then-existing
social relations were, at least, threatened: the increasing emphasis on foods supplied by women and diminished importance of
game hunted by men had the potential to change gender relations. In particular, this change made women effectively independent economically. And since male independence (from other
males) was predicated on marriage and the resulting control of a
woman's gathered foodstuffs, this increased the men's dependence on women and marriage. (269)
Whitley sets out "to explain why people who principally ate seeds and nuts
made art that emphasized mountain sheep and bows and arrows" (258).
"While there could have been a series of solutions to avert the potential
80 Women's Studies in Communication
social disruption that might have resulted by this changing subsistence
pattern, the archaeological evidence suggests that a response in the Cosos
involved a dramatic increase in the production of rock engravings" (269),
Whitley interprets these rock engravings as products of male shamans,
a social and spiritual role that allowed men to maintain their powerful
position vis-a-vis women ("By the Hunter"), Changes in subsistence
practices decentered men's role as providers, threatening their social status
and their culture's gender arrangements. In response, men used a role
predicated on "supernatural power" and "esoteric knowledge" that manifested itself in rock art, Whitley's essay provides one narrative of how
men respond to a felt crisis of masculinity—a narrative that may say more
about the contemporary crisis of masculinity than (pre)historic Numic culture.
Following the rhetoric of inquiry (Simons), the rhetoric of the human
sciences (Nelson et al,), and feminist standpoint theory (Haraway; Harding), I contend that contemporary archaeological knowledge, specifically
that concerning (pre)historic rock art in western North America, is reflective of and an active participant in contemporary gender ideologies and
struggles, including the crisis of masculinity. Using Barry Brummett's
concept of discursive homology, I argue that the figure of the shaman in
the literature on Native American rock art not only mirrors the perceived
causes, tensions, and contradictions involved in the contemporary EuroAmerican crisis of masculinity, but engages the crisis and offers a potential
resolution. In Kenneth Burke's terms, the shamanic interpretation of rock
art offers "a strategy for encompassing a situation" (109), articulating
narratives, ideologies, and motives of contemporary Euro-American hegemonic masculinity in the guise of archaeological interpretations of
(pre)historic indigenous cultures.
To establish that Whitley's arguments concerning Numic cultures of
800 years ago do not merely parallel but reflect and engage the contemporary crisis of masculinity, I review existing research on Western images
of Native Americans and the crisis of masculinity. With this foundation, I
analyze two perspectives on rock art—hunting magic and shamanism—
for their participation in the ongoing construction of "Native American"
and its involvement with contemporary forms and crises of masculinity.
Identification of discursive homologies between contemporary EuroAmerican masculinity and archaeological interpretations of (pre)historic
indigenous cultures offers a powerful approach for identifying unconscious ideologies and motives, as well as rhetorically appealing projec-
Richard A, Rogers 81
tions and displacements, operating in and between apparently unrelated
discourses. Finally, I discuss the implications of the shaman as a model of
Native American masculinity for the felt crisis in Euro-American masculinity, suggesting that this figure represents a new strategy to "revive"
hegemonic masculinity by straddling the physical/mental binary of masculine performance via a spiritual role grounded in virile male heterosexuality.
Representations of the Primitive Native American Other
In his classic work The White Man's Indian, Robert Berkhofer states,
"the essence of the White image of the Indian has been the definition of
Native Americans in fact and fancy as a separate and single other" (xv).
The primitive Other has long served as a site for projecting Western fears
and fantasies, for working through anxieties and conflicts while maintaining an illusion of the integrity and superiority of Western cultures and
identities (Gilman; Torgovnick), For example, dominant views of "Native
American" are manifested in recurrent, iconic images such as Edward
Curtis's photographs (1896-1930) of "vanishing" American Indians,
James Fraser's 1915 oft-replicated sculpture "The End of the Trail" and
the early 1970s Keep America Beautiful campaign featuring Iron-Eyes
Cody shedding a tear as he surveys a polluted and littered landscape.
These images do not represent specific individuals or Native cultures,
Euro-American representations of Native Americans cue as well as contribute to an abstraction called "Native American" or "Indian," embodying notions of barbarism, nobility, stoicism, harmonious spirituality, environmental stewardship, and a host of other shifting and contradictory
themes (Berkhofer; Bird, "Savage"; Bird, "Tales"; Buescher and Ono;
Bury; Deloria; Torgovnick; van Lent), Berkhofer also notes that "White
interest in the American Indian surges and ebbs with the tides of history"
(xiii). Not only the degree of interest but the nature of that interest shifts
based on changes in Euro-American culture. Therefore, "to understand the
White image of the Indian is to understand White societies and intellectual
premises over time more than the diversity of Native Americans" (xvi).
Examination of Euro-American representations of Native Americans not
only identifies what Native Americans mean in contemporary Euro-American culture, but how those meanings function in relation to Euro-American cultural dynamics.
82 Women's Studies in Communication
The Western trope of the primitive is bifurcated, with primitive Others
alternately or simultaneously serving as models of the undesirable and the
desirable based on a shifting set of binary oppositions: emotion/reason,
barbaric/civilized, feminine/masculine, nature/culture, innocent/corrupt,
virile/impotent, violent/peaceful. As many scholars have argued, the primitive is a binary structure used to establish non-Western cultures as
manifestations of earlier stages of development as well as to project both
desired and undesirable traits onto Others (Torgovnick), The primitive
Other symbolizes what is desired (yet forbidden), what is repulsive (yet
attractive), what is lost (but yearned for) (Gilman), In particular, the trope
of the primitive is deeply sexualized, articulating and displacing Western
sexual ideologies, desires, and conflicts (Torgovnick), Examination of
discourses of the primitive can reveal shifts in emphasis and evaluation
that lend insight into contemporary cultural dynamics and reveal the
categories of "primitive" and "civilized" as fluid, contradictory, and contested.
Gendered Representations of Native Americans
A variety of scholars have examined Western and specifically EuroAmerican representations of Native Americans (e,g,, Berkhofer;
Churchill; Deloria; Kadish; Torgovnick), though often without attention to
gender variances (exceptions include Bird, "Savage"; Bird, "Tales"; Buescher and Ono; van Lent), Specifically, little attention has been paid to the
almost exclusively male image of Native Americans: Iron-Eyes Cody
crying in response to a trashed landscape, the warrior of "The End of the
Trail" with his downcast eyes and spear, the Hollywood brave on his horse
defiantly raising his feathered spear. Chief Seattle's words and image on
a bumper sticker, Elizabeth Bird, however, has noted the male predominance in these representations, pointing out that while historically images
of Native women were central to colonialism, "Indian men, more than
women, were the focus of the wave of fascination with things Indian that
first crested in the 1960s and 1970s when the counter-culture embraced
Indians as purveyors of ancient wisdom and spiritual knowledge" ("Savage" 75),
Bird identifies two predominant images of Native American men and
two predominant images of Native American women in popular media.
The first image of Indian men is the "Doomed Warrior" (Bird, "Savage"),
This character has a strong sexual dimension reflecting both positive and
negative images of Native Americans, articulating Indians as (sexually)
Richard A. Rogers 83
dangerous savages while the figure's bravery and physicality also creates
sexual appeal. The recurrent narrative pattern paints the Doomed Warrior
as physically strong but structurally impotent, a figure whose place in
history will inevitably be eclipsed. The second image of Native American
men is the "Wise Elder," who is not a subject or object of sexual desire but
is defined by an emphasis on wisdom and spirituality and is particularly
important for positive representations of Native Americans in relation to
environmental ethics and New Age spiritualities (Bird, "Savage"). Turning
to Native women. Bird notes, "Indian women have become largely invisible and irrelevant in mainstream popular culture" ("Savage" 85) with the
exception of Pocahontas. Nevertheless, by examining representations
from colonial times to the 1990s, Bird identifies two types of Native
women: "faceless, rather sexless Squaws in minor roles [...] or sexy
exotic Princesses or Maidens" ("Savage" 89). Paralleling the virgin/whore
dichotomy (Bird, "Tales"), both of these images are sexualized, though
with different evaluations. The Princess/Maiden is sexualized as an object
of desire for Western men and is opposed to the Squaw. An Indian woman
becomes a Squaw when she has sex with a man. Squaws lack individual
identities, are at the beck and call of their husbands, and live lives of
drudgery (Bird, "Tales"). Bird's approach is informative but relatively
static, cataloging various meanings assigned to Native men and women
over time. Returning to Berkhofer, dominant images of Native Americans—in all their continuities, changes, and contradictions—are responsive to dynamics within Euro-American culture. In order to highlight
contemporary gender dynamics in relation to representations of Native
Americans, specifically homologies between contemporary narratives of
masculinity and those in the rock art literature, I turn to a discussion of the
"crisis of masculinity."
Masculinities and Crises
The crisis of masculinity, both historically and in post-1960s USAmerica, has been the subject of several analyses. While authors diverge
on issues such as whether the crisis is "real" and its potential for the
continuation or displacement of hegemonic masculinity, there are convergences in the literature of relevance to my focus on gendered representations of Native Americans, the acts of projection such representations
entail, and the means by which such representations and projections
articulate with the masculinity crisis.
84 Women's Studies in Communication
Central to the crisis are a series of tensions or contradictions characterizing Westem masculinities: physical strength versus intellectual capacity, virile sexuality versus emasculation, and blue versus white collar. In
her examination of the crisis of Anglo-American masculinity circa 1900,
Bederman focuses on the tension between civilized and primitive masculinities. In racial and national terms, the superiority of Anglo-American
masculinity was predicated on the deployment of a civilized masculinity
(based on self-mastery and intellectual capacity) over and against the
primitive masculinity (based on bodily strength, sexual virility, and a lack
of moral control) of racialized Others. Civilized masculinity, however, was
also seen as a sign of the feminization of middle-class Anglo-American
men, threatening traditional signs of male superiority such as physical
strength and sexual virility, and questioning the inferiority of racial and
working class Others. This created a desire on the part of bourgeois men
for what "primitive" males were presumed to possess: strength and virility
(see also Bordo). Hence, Bederman notes a decline in the Victorian model
of civilized manliness and a rise in the discourse and appeal of primitive
masculinity circa 1900, although both models of masculinity remained in
circulation throughout the twentieth century. Bederman argues that the
contradictions between these models of masculinity were not resolved or
necessarily experienced as contradictions—the discourses of both primitive and civilized masculinity were deployed strategically in support of the
hegemony of men over women, the bourgeois over the working class, and
whites over immigrants and colonized peoples.
Ashcraft and Flores argue that the basic tension identified by Bederman
is in play one hundred years later in the contemporary crisis of white collar
masculinity. Focusing on discourse that "mourns the imminent collapse of
the corporate man, over-civilized and emasculated by allied obligations to
work and to women" (2), they identify a "civilized/primitive" masculinity
that demands both civilized and primitive masculine performances. These
performances, deployed in the maintenance of an unstable, elastic, and
historically mobile hegemonic masculinity, nevertheless leave the underlying tensions unresolved. This lack of resolution, while holding the
potential for individual confusion and even collective resistance, does not
necessarily imply a failure of hegemonic masculinity. As Sally Robinson
notes, "there is ample evidence to suggest that white and male power
reproduces itself through cycles of crisis and resolution" (86).
A summary of the basic narrative structure often used to explain the
current crisis establishes a basis for identifying parallels between the
Richard A. Rogers 85
discourse of the crisis and interpretations of indigenous rock art. The
narrative is grounded in a period of (mythical) gender stability most
commonly represented as "the 1950s" in which gender roles were clearly
defined, with man as breadwinner and woman as homemaker, and produced stable identities and social harmony. Economically, (white) men
occupied productive roles, either as blue collar workers involved in
industrial manufacturing or as white collar "corporate men" who were
offered meaningful employment and job security in return for loyalty to
the corporation.
Beginning in the 1960s and continuing to today, several factors eroded
the stability, clarity, and harmony of the established gender configuration
and specifically threatened the identity, social role, and prestige of (white)
men. First, feminism and the women's movement challenged the desirability and validity of traditional gender roles and promoted women's
entry into previously male-only realms. More broadly, a range of related
social movements (civil rights, gay rights, anti-war) challenged the validity of white male privilege. Second, economic changes eroded the basis for
(white) male identity. The guarantee of a good income and job security
was weakened as a result of economic shifts such as globalization and
corporate strategies such as down-sizing, out-sourcing, and automation.
Industrial production also gave way to an increasingly information- and
service-based economy. The loss of blue collar work, the rise of feminized
(pink collar) work, and/or the perceived feminization of white collar work
parallels a perceived loss of status at home. The overall result is emasculation and feminization, feelings of disempowerment and anger. Various
versions of the narrative offer different implied or expressed resolutions to
the crisis, including a return to primitive masculinities and the scapegoating of women, minorities, and/or "soft men" (Ashcraft and Flores; Faludi).
This basic narrative demonstrates that masculinity is not only culturally
relative, continually (re)constituted, and a site of struggle, but refiects and
responds to social, economic, and political changes; given the conflictual
and contradictory character of social, economic, and political systems,
masculinity refiects, utilizes, and obscures such conflicts and contradictions. A focus on the dynamics of these tensions and contradictions is
important for avoiding oversimplified diagnoses of the crisis of masculinity as simply a loss of what was once stable. Shifts in and struggles over
masculinity are diagnostic of social structure and consciousness, and
reveal masculinity, not as essence, but as multiple, complex, and contra-
86 Women's Studies in Communication
dictory—as "a historical, ideological process" (Bederman 7). As Sally
Robinson states in her discussion of the post-1960s crisis of masculinity,
backlash is an oversimplified concept that obscures the much
more complicated struggle over normativity in American culture.
Rather than seeing that struggle as a singular, pitched battle
between the white man and his various others, it is much more
accurate—and fruitful, as well—to think about how normativity,
constantly under revision, shifts in response to the changing
social, political and cultural terrain. (4)
Such an understanding dovetails with Berkhofer's approach, pointing to
the representation of Native Americans as not only reflective of the
internal conflicts in Euro-American culture but as a rhetorical force, a
shaper of consciousness, social relations, and power. Within this framework, the interpretation of (pre)historic Native American rock art is not
only a site for the circulation of the image of Native Americans in
Euro-American culture, but articulates gender and sexuality in an engagement of the crisis of masculinity.
Rock Art in the Contemporary Cultural Landscape
"Rock art" refers primarily to petroglyphs (pecked, engraved, or incised
on rocks) and pictographs (painted on rocks) made by indigenous peoples
in "prehistoric" and "historic" contexts.' Rock art is an important source
of contemporary imagery used to cue or represent Native Americans in
general, especially those of the southwestern United States. Many Southwest tourist destinations use rock art-derived imagery, most commonly the
image of the hump-backed flute player known (incorrectly) as "Kokopelli." Many other rock art motifs are also commonly used including a
variety of anthropomorphic figures, stylized handprints, geometric forms
such as spirals, and images of animals such as bighorn sheep and cougars.
Such imagery appears on printed materials for national parks and other
recreational sites; on informational and commercial signage; and, most
inescapably, on a variety of tourist merchandise. In addition to calendars,
guide books, and picture books which specifically represent and discuss
rock art, clothing, sculptures, jewelry, stuffed toys, pot-holders, mugs, and
an almost unimaginable variety of other tourist merchandise are composed
of or adorned with rock art-derived images. In addition, hotels, camp-
Richard A. Rogers 87
grounds, restaurants, tour companies, gift shops, real estate developments,
and other commercial establishments utilize rock art-derived imagery to
identify and market their products and services.
Interpreting Rock Art
Paralleling its rising popularity and commercialization, rock art has
also become increasingly visible in academic circles. USAmerican anthropologists and archaeologists, with notable exceptions, dismissed the significance of rock art well into the twentieth century (Hays-Gilpin;
Schaafsma). Early research focused on stylistic classification and the
distribution of styles and motifs. Historical and cultural contextualization
and interpretation of rock art was generally avoided, reflecting the reign of
positivism in anthropology and archaeology. Since the 1960s, partially in
conjunction with the shift from processual to post-processual and cognitive approaches in archaeology (Whitley, "New Approaches"), several
models for the meaning and function of rock art have been proposed.^
This analysis focuses on two models for interpreting rock art in the
western U.S., specifically the Great Basin: hunting magic and shamanism.
Three factors guided this choice. First, while other types of rock art
research reflect and enact gendered and cultural biases (Bass), interpretive
models are more useful for identifying cultural projections. The ultimate
indeterminacy of rock art's "real" meanings facilitates projection of EuroAmerican ideologies, struggles, and contradictions onto such imagery as
well as dependence on existing structures of meaning in the development
of models to explain its meaning and function in the cultures which
produced it. Archaeologist Kelley Hays-Gilpin has examined the infiuence
of gender and other cultural projections on rock art studies and offers this
summary: "The myths in the rock art literature so far are mainly ours, not
those of prehistoric people" (63). Models for the interpretation of rock art
are likely to reveal as much if not more about contemporary ideologies and
dynamics as they are about the cultures that produced the rock art.
Second, hunting magic and shamanism have each occupied the position
of a dominant model for the interpretation of Great Basin rock art, a
dominance which extended each model's application to a multitude of
regions and rock art styles and facilitated both models' dissemination
beyond the academy. These models have infiuenced the presentation of
rock art to the general public in the form of "coffee-table" books (e.g.,
Malotki and Weaver; Whitley, Art), guide books (e.g., Slifer; Whitley,
Guide), videos (e.g., Pahuta), museum displays, interpretive materials at
88 Women's Studies in Communication
rock art sites, and information provided by tour guides (Hays-Gilpin).
These models contribute to the general public's understanding of Native
American cultures, histories, and gender roles as well as framing their
understanding of rock art's nature and significance.
Third, these two models are sequential, an important factor in tracking
their relationship with the contemporary crisis of masculinity. Hunting
magic wasfirmlyin place by the 1960s, began to decline in the 1980s, and
was largely discredited by the 1990s. Shamanism appeared as an explanatory framework in the 1980s and achieved a position of dominance,
replacing hunting magic, by the 1990s (Keyser and Whitley). Due to their
prominence in the literature, their impact on the presentation of rock art to
the general public, and the movement away from hunting magic and
toward the shamanic hypothesis over the last two decades, these two
models are well suited for tracking changes in rock art interpretation and
the implications of those changes for the image of Native Americans and
the dynamics of Euro-American masculinities.
Following the rhetoric of inquiry and the rhetoric of the human sciences
(Nelson et al.; Simons) and feminist critiques of science via standpoint
theory (Haraway; Harding), models for rock art interpretation are not
solely or even predominantly determined by archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence, and are thereby potentially symptomatic
of the (unconscious) projection of Western gender ideologies. Following
my discussion of the trope of the primitive, models for rock art interpretation are not simply hypotheses formed from available evidence by
hermetically sealed epistemologies, but can serve to project Euro-American ideologies, tensions, and conflicts onto Native American cultures
through a dependence on existing frames of reference, structures of
meaning, and narrative patterns.'
The relationships between rock art interpretation and the contemporary
crisis in masculinity can be identified through the concept of discursive
homologies. Brummett defines homology as "a pattern found to be ordering significant particulars of different and disparate experiences" (1) that
"is most interesting when it is observed as a linkage among disparate
orders of experience" (2). Part of what makes a text appealing or rhetorically effective is the use of implied, often unconscious parallels to other
texts or lived experience. Such parallels, however, are neither a priori nor
self-evident; they are rhetorical constructions that affect how a situation is
understood and evaluated. The use of formal patterns to link different
particulars leads Brummet to the principle of vulnerability: "one experi-
Richard A, Rogers 89
ence may have rhetorical effects on how people perceive and order another
experience or group of experiences if they are formally linked" (41)—
even (or especially) if the parallels between the two situations and/or the
underlying homology itself is outside of conscious awareness, "Attunement to rhetorical homology through methods of rhetorical criticism
allows one to track lines of rhetorical influence that might otherwise be
obscured" (Brummett 3),
In an extension of the basic tenets of the rhetoric of inquiry and
standpoint theory, I hold that academic knowledge and literature not only
embody and perpetuate particular cultural and ideological biases, but also
function, as with "popular" discourses (Torgovnick), to project and "work
through" contemporary cultural tensions. Through discursive homologies
and the principle of vulnerability, contemporary discourses can infiuence
archaeological interpretations of the past, while archaeological interpretations can in turn influence or at least respond to other contemporary
discourses, such as those regarding the crisis of masculinity.
The vulnerability of archaeological knowledge to influence by contemporary values, narratives, and ideologies has been demonstrated by a
variety of gender-based and feminist critiques of North American archaeology (Galloway; Gilchrist; S, Nelson; Trocolli; Watson and Kennedy), In
this analysis I draw from these gendered critiques of archaeology and,
when available, rock art studies in particular—not to "correct" for distortions in rock art interpretation, but to establish such interpretations as
neither self-evident nor produced in isolation from the standpoints and
ideologies of researchers, thereby identifying potential projections of
contemporary ideologies and tensions onto indigenous rock art. To support
the case that the homologies I identify between these two discourses are
not merely a set of coincidental parallels or the manifestation of crosscultural patterns of gender or patriarchy, I engage in rather "conventional"
gender critiques of the two models for rock art interpretation. This is a
necessary step in demonstrating that the discourses of rock art and the
crisis of masculinity are homologous and potentially mutually influential.
This conventional critique helps identify both overt and subtle parallels
between the two disparate discourses under examination here, parallels
which suggest possible vulnerabilities between the discourses.
The most obvious gendered pattern in rock art studies is an almost
complete absence of women in rock art production and use (Hays-Gilpin),
a pattern that parallels contemporary popular representations of Native
Americans, A focus on Native men and an erasure of Native women
90 Women's Studies in Communication
continues in the interpretation of rock art, furthering the androcentrism of
the Euro-American image of "Native American" and enabling it as a site
for working through the contemporary crisis of masculinity.
Rock Art as Hunting Magic
In hunter-gatherer societies in the (pre)historic Great Basin, many
researchers interpreted rock art as "hunting magic" (e,g,, Bettinger and
Baumhoff; Grant; Heizer and Baumhoff), Images of game animals and
weapons, hunting scenes, and depictions of game animals with protruding
arrows or darts, as well as the placement of rock art sites near hunting
areas, were taken to indicate that the production of rock art was intended
to insure a good hunt. Well-established in the 1960s, this was the dominant
interpretive model for Great Basin petroglyphs in particular into the
1980s, In the last two decades, however, this model's dominance has
diminished due in part to a lack of corroborating ethnohistorical evidence,
rock art sites often not being correlated with hunting areas, and the rise of
new interpretations (Keyser and Whitley; Whitley, "By the Hunter"), I
argue that changes in conditions of Euro-American masculinity played a
role in the decline of the hunting magic model—it not only lost favor due
to its inability to account for relevant evidence, but its inadequacy for
articulating certain images of Native peoples and forms of masculinity. To
set the basis for this argument, I analyze the gendering of the hunting
magic model and the structure of meaning that frames it, the Western view
of hunter-gatherers.
Feminist critiques of anthropology and archaeology have identified a
rather homogenized view of hunter-gatherer societies with regard to
gender and subsistence: "the women gather, the men hunt" (Murdock, qtd,
in S, Nelson 86), Men were assumed to be hunters due to their greater
physical strength and lack of constraints from child-bearing and rearing
(Watson and Kennedy), Male archaeologists focused on what they perceived as valuable: large-game hunting and the related use and production
of hunting tools (Gilchrist), As Sarah Nelson puts it, the stereotype is that
what men do is heroic and fun (hunting), while women's activities are by
definition dull and repetitive (gathering and processing). However, crosscultural evidence fails to support such generalizations. In many instances,
men gather and prepare plants, and women engage in activities that could
be called hunting (Gilchrist; S, Nelson),
This gender duality in hunter-gatherer societies relates directly to rock
art as hunting magic. If only men hunt, then rock art depicting hunting
Richard A. Rogers 91
scenes, weapons, and large game animals was presumably made by men,
in support of male activities. This chain of reasoning is clear in Robert
Bettinger and Martin Baumhoff's discussion of Great Basin rock art in the
context of the replacement of Pre-Numic hunter-gatherers by Numic
hunter-gatherers between 1000 AD and the "historic" period. In this 1982
monograph from American Antiquity, Bettinger and Baumhoff propose
that different hunter-gatherer strategies characterized these groups, with
the Pre-Numic populations being "travellers," a strategy reliant on largegame hunting and procurement of high-quality plant resources (which
require less processing). Groups adopting such a strategy "are required to
maximize the procurement of large game [. . .] and to gather information
about the density and distribution of high-ranked plant resources over a
fairly large area" (Bettinger and Baumhoff 492). Because large-game
hunting and long-distance traveling "generally fall to males and because
processing tasks, which generally fall to females, are minimized, it follows
that travellers should adopt practices that produce high male/female ratios,
i.e., a male-rich society" (492). In contrast, the Numic used a "processor"
strategy involving lower-quality plant resources, less travel time, and
greater extraction and processing time. "In processing societies, therefore,
the sex ratio should strike a more even balance between males and females
or produce female-rich societies" (492).
Bettinger and Baumhoff argue that almost all Great Basin rock art was
produced by the Pre-Numic "travellers." The rock art of the region was
made by hunters at a time when hunting was a larger part of the adaptive
strategy, and the relative absence of Numic ("processor") rock art is due
to the relative lack of importance of hunting in their adaptive strategy. The
linkage of the traveller/processor model to the interpretation of rock art as
hunting magic clarifies the gendering of the rock art: Numic processors
"were insufficiently reliant on large game to account for such a practice"
and "incapable of maintaining male groups of sufficient size in sufficiently
continuous association to sustain hunting cults of the sort likely to have
been responsible for Great Basin rock art" (Bettinger and Baumhoff 494).
Feminized societies produce little rock art or rock art of inferior quality
compared to that of "male rich" societies.
This image of rock art makers is based in more than a strict division of
labor. The interpretation of rock art as "hunting magic" attributes agency
to men through the use of rituals and symbols to enhance control over the
environment and other entities which inhabit it (cf. Hays-Gilpin; Watson
and Kennedy). Native men are active and adventurous; skilled in survival.
92 Women's Studies in Communication
travel, tracking, hunting, and the production of tools; and in possession of
ritual and imagery designed to enhance their power. Implicit in the hunting
magic model is the Squaw (Bird, "Tales"): Native American women
engaged in lives of drudgery, awaiting the return of men with the meat
needed for survival and tediously processing gathered foods. Most important for the purpose of this essay, however, is the image of masculinity the
hunting magic model presents: physically strong, skilled in the ways of
nature, provider of sustenance, and possessing power derived from ritual
activity. For the Pre-Numic men of the Great Basin, their social role was
secure, their contribution (meat) was important, and their material traces
(e.g., rock art and projectile points) are valued by later cultures. But when
their social structure is compromised by changes in subsistence practices,
the men and the rock art literally decline and are supplanted by a less
interesting "female rich" society.
Rock Art as Shamanic Practice
Many alternative interpretive models have been advanced for the rock
art of various regions and traditions: mythic and historic narratives, clan
identification, territorial and route markers, astronomical observation and
time-keeping, fertility rituals, and rites of passage (Hays-Gilpin; Whitley,
Guide). However, arguments concerning the shamanic hypothesis have
dominated recent interpretive rock art studies. By the 1990s shamanism
had replaced hunting magic as the dominant model for rock art interpretation in the Great Basin and elsewhere. As Hays-Gilpin notes, "'shamanism' emerges as one of the most important and controversial concepts in
rock art interpretation all over the world" (13). Rick Bury adds, "to the
interested public, the notion that rock art is explained by shamanism is an
attractive one" (150).
The shamanic/neuropsychological model was developed by David
Lewis-Williams through his work with San rock art in South Africa and
has been applied to Palaeolithic cave paintings in Europe and rock art
across western North America (Turpin). In the U.S., David Whitley has
been the primary proponent of the shamanic hypothesis, especially for
Great Basin rock art. My analysis focuses on Whitley's formulations due
to his numerous publications, their prominence in the literature, and their
influence on rock art interpretation in a variety of contexts."* This approach
is one of the most complex and multifaceted attempts to explain a large
portion of rock art in the western U.S. While proponents of this model
point out that shamanism does not explain all rock art in the western U.S.,
Richard A. Rogers 93
Lewis-Williams's claim that "without a doubt, the evidence now points
unequivocally to shamanism as one of the principal, probably the principal, context in which rock art was made on [the North American] continent" is representative of the explanatory power its proponents believe the
model offers (347). Such statements offer one explanation for increasing
resistance to the shamanic model (e.g.. Bury; Hedges; Kehoe; Ross).
Despite a rise in both empirical and ideological criticisms of the shamanic
hypothesis, little attention has been given to its gendered implications.
Before discussing the gendering of rock art in this model, however, a brief
overview is necessary.
Literal interpretations of Great Basin (and much other) rock art imagery
face several hurdles. While many anthropomorphic figures can be interpreted as humans, various distortions to the human form, such as anthropomorphs with the heads and/or feet of birds, challenge literal readings. In
addition, various images, such as those of bighorn sheep, are often rotated
or inverted in ways which literal readings strain to explain. Finally, much
Great Basin rock art includes abstract geometric forms such as zig-zags
and dots in grid patterns as well as meandering lines. The shamanic/
neuropsychological model is able to explain the literal, the fantastic, and
the abstract elements of many Great Basin rock art sites (not to mention
many other regional and cultural styles). The neuropsychological model is
grounded in the assumption that much rock art is a record of altered states
of consciousness (ASC). ASCs may be involved in shamanic journeys,
vision quests, or initiation rites, and may be induced by drugs, sensory
deprivation, fasting, chanting, and/or drumming. The stages experienced
in ASCs explain both abstract geometric forms as well as distortions of
representational elements (e.g., anthropomorphs with elongated limbs or
bird heads) via patterns of hallucination grounded in human neurological
structures (see Lewis-Williams for a more complete discussion).
A key aspect of the shamanic hypothesis is connecting ASC-induced
imagery to the shamanic beliefs and practices of specific cultures. In the
Great Basin, shamans were understood as having special powers enabling
them to travel to another world where they interact with spirits, obtain
spirit helpers, and access knowledge to help them in various activities in
the mundane world, such as curing (or causing) ailments, controlling game
animals, and bringing rain (Whitley, "By the Hunter"; "Finding Rain").
Shamans entered this supematural world through ASCs and subsequently
recorded their visions on rock (Whitley, "Shamanism"). This model not
only allows Whitley to make sense of bizarre anthropomorphic figures and
94 Women's Studies in Communication
abstract designs in Great Basin rock art; it also enables metaphoric
readings of the imagery. For example, certain motifs at rock art sites, such
as birds and frogs, are significant because these animals cross boundaries
(land/sky, land/water) much as shamans travel between worlds. By extension, anthropomorphs with bird-like attributes indicate a shaman. Images
of apparently dead animals (e.g., upside down or impaled bighom sheep)
or of humans killing animals are taken as metaphors for entry into the
other world: "death" equals "entry into the supematural." Flight and
sexual intercourse are other metaphors for supematural travel (Whitley, "Shamanism").
The most obvious gender issue in the shamanic model is the absence of
women, as both subject matter and producers of rock art. In his discussion
of Coso Range rock art Whitley claims that "completely absent in the
Coso engravings are representations of women's crafts and utensils (e.g.,
basketry), or, for that matter, their product: the plants they gathered,"
therefore "all of the symbols of the shaman [the rock art imagery] are
masculine" ("By the Hunter" 270). The only objects considered female are
those which fit the women-as-mother/women-as-gatherer model, and the
absence of overt evidence of women's involvement means that the rock art
must have been made by and about men. Similarly, the gender identification of anthropomorphic figures in Great Basin rock art appears to be
guided by a set of self-reinforcing assumptions: rock art was made by
shamans, most anthropomorphic rock art figures are representations of
shamans, and shamans were almost universally men. As Sarah Nelson
explains in her discussion of male bias in archaeological interpretation, "if
women are posited as shamans, strong proof is demanded, while if any
activity is gendered male, not even a bridging argument is required" (136).
Whitley denies that women produced (shamanic) rock art because
women were not shamans in most far western indigenous cultures ("Ethnography"; Guide). However, as Hays-Gilpin states, "female shamans
were also frequent in many, but not all. Native American groups of the
westem United States" (89). Patricia Bass quotes Kroeber's Handbook of
the Indians of California as indicating that in some ethnolinguistic groups
"the shaman was almost invariably a woman" (68). Mairi Ross points out
that in many cultures women were thought better suited to the altered
states of consciousness required for shamanic practice. While Whitley
could counter these generalities by citing ethnographic evidence specific
to the cultures he discusses, Ross argues that female shamans were
Richard A. Rogers 95
demonized as a result of European contact, questioning the validity of
ethnographic evidence on this matter
Whitley explains the lack of female shamans by emphasizing that
shamanism in far western North America, and specifically in the Numic
Great Basin, relied on inversions of gender symbolism. Rock art sites were
linked linguistically to female dogs, baskets (made and used by women),
and the color red (linked to women via menstrual blood) (Whitley,
"Finding Rain"). These sites were portals through which shamans entered
the supernatural. Specifically, rock art sites were "symbolic vaginas" and
a shaman's ritual journey was understood through the metaphor of (hetero)sexual intercourse (Whitley, "Finding Rain"; "Shamanism"). By defining shamanic journeys as intercourse with female sites/spirits, Whitley
explains the dearth of female shamans through "symbolic inversions." The
metaphoric link of intercourse with shamanic journeys is based on hallucinations involving sexual relations with spirits; some hallucinogens used
by shamans resulted in priapism, which, along with nocturnal emissions,
was understood as shamans having intercourse with supernatural entities
(Whitley, "Finding Rain"). Shamans, by opening the "earth's vagina"
(e.g., a crack in the rock at a rock art site), "restore[d] life and fecundity
to the world" ("Finding Rain" 19). Whitley cites a 1936 ethnographic
report indicating that shamanism was so heterosexualized that homosexuals could not be shamans ("Finding Rain"). On the literal side of the
intercourse metaphor, shamans were known for their "unusual virility" and
"extreme sexual appetites" ("Shamanism" 21); "they were thought sexually predatory, and young girls were cautioned to keep away from them"
("Finding Rain" 19).
"Third genders" such as the "two-spirit" were associated with the role
of shaman or healer in some of the 150 Native American cultures in which
such practices were documented (Gilchrist), questioning Whitley's model
of gender binaries and heterosexuality. A small portion of males in nearly
every traditional Native American society took on a feminine gender
identity (Hays-Gilpin), and cross-dressing occurred among some shamans
(Ross). "Shamans in many parts of the world do not conform to the same
gender norms as nonshamans [...]. Some probably become shamans
because they have ambiguous gender identities to begin with, and some
cross-dress or blend indicators of more than one gender for spiritual
reasons" (Hays-Gilpin 89). In most of these cultures shamans "are expected to combine, confound or transcend sex and gender categories"
(Hays-Gilpin 61-62). The rigidity of the binary gender arrangement Whit-
96 Women's Studies in Communication
ley describes is potentially explained by tbe impact of Cbristian missionaries and otber Europeans on indigenous cultures and ethnographic accounts.
Gender fluidity problematizes gender identifications of antbropomorphic figures and other rock art elements. In relation to tbe rock art of tbe
Coso Range, Wbitley, apparently relying upon Grant's earlier tabulations,
states that of the 400 "patterned body anthropomorpbs" (wbich he identifies as shamans), "only about a balf dozen are female" (Guide 121),
Discussing what he labels a very rare portrayal of a female shaman,
Whitley explains, "based on general conventions of rock art representation
across tbe West, female figures are typically represented by tbe depiction
of a pendant labia and/or a cbaracteristic bottle-shaped body, as opposed
to straight up and down" (Guide 121), Three problems with these claims
can be identified. First, my review of tbe tabulations he references and
photographs of examples he discusses lead me to believe tbat in tbe
absence of overt "female" markers, figures are assumed to be male even
if no male-specific markers (e,g,, a penis) are present,^ Second, tbe
existence of cross-dressing and tbird genders questions tbe use of cultural
codes to identify biological sex, Tbird, in discussing tbe use of bistoric
ethnograpby Whitley emphasizes that many informants spoke in metaphorical terms and hence many of their statements must be interpreted
figuratively, not literally ("Etbnograpby"), However, be does not suggest
tbat either ethnographic statements about tbe sex/gender of shamans or
visual markers in rock art (e,g,, apparent penises or pendant labia) could
tbemselves be figurative, Whitley appears to assume a binary system of
gender closely mapped onto biological sex, two assumptions wbicb may
be projections of Western ideologies,
Whitley's most repeated explanation for why there were no (or few)
female shamans is that "menstrual blood was tbought so inimical to
supernatural potency that women, during menstruation, were prohibited
from participating in rituals, and effectively excluded from becoming
shamans" ("Finding Rain" 21), While postmenopausal women could be
shamans, they were "an oddity" and "necessarily believed to be sorceresses, or evil sbamans" (Guide 123), for "while male sexuality was
equated with intelligence and controlled supernatural potency, female
sexuality was unbridled, dangerous and generally malevolent" ("Finding
Rain" 21),
Wbitley consistently describes menstruation's relationship to shamanic
power as "inimical" (having the disposition of an enemy, characterized by
Richard A, Rogers 97
hostility or malevolence). Though he does not use the pollution metaphor
often used in Westem/Judeo-Christian cultures to name the effect of
menstruation on the sacred, tbe effect is similar, Patricia Galloway argues
tbat these views of menstruation are often transferred to other cultures'
menstrual taboos and distort the ethnographic record by forcing tbe
Western "male=sacred/female=pol luting" structure onto cultures wbicb
may not operate from sucb a hierarchy, Ruth Trocolli argues that menstrual separation "can be viewed as a power issue" because "women bleed
and do not die—a process heavily imbued witb metaphors of power" (52),
If menstruation was seen as powerful, as opposed to "polluting" or
"inimical," this can explain Isabel Kelly's Chemehuevi informant's statement, apparently overlooked by Wbitley, tbat "a woman bad stronger
power than a man" and "not all women doctors [shamans] were bad; some
cured" (134),
Wbitley's cbaracterization of tbe indigenous view of female sexuality is
strikingly homologous with Western/Judeo-Cbristian sexual ideologies
(see Schott), Female rock art symbols, such as tbe vulva-forms found in
the Great Basin, are interpreted by Whitley as "most likely represent[ing]
examples of shamans' activities as sorcerers: in this case, harnessing tbe
malevolent powers of the supernatural to steal another's soul, or otherwise
cause tbem harm"; "female sexuality generally and the vagina specifically
were associated with bewitching" and only male sbamans "could control
tbe power contained in" such rock art sites ("Finding Rain" 21), While
Wbitley acknowledges tbat sbamanic power was viewed as ambivalent,
able to be used for good or evil, and tbat a sbaman's sexual potency was
a sign of botb bis power and bis dangerousness, he nevertheless reproduces the ideology (i,e,, manifests an homology) that menstruation and
female sexuality are unambiguously evil.
The one area where Whitley concedes to the female production and use
of rock art in tbe far western U,S, is in association with puberty rites in
soutbwestern Califomia where etbnograpbic evidence directly identifies
sucb practices (Wbitley, "Etbnograpby"; "Finding Rain"), These puberty
rites ended witb a race to a rock on which were painted diamond-chain
patterns, representing rattlesnakes, with red paint, symbolizing menstrual
blood, "In an inversion of gender symbols, pballic rattlesnake was considered tbe ideal spirit belper for these young girls; hence, this girls' art is
dominated by scbematic rattlesnake paintings" ("Finding Rain" 15), Whitley argues that panels witb multiple instances of the same motif (e,g,,
diamond chains) are female, whereas sbamans' panels will show a diverse
98 Women's Studies in Communication
range of motifs representing shamans, their spirit helpers, and other spirits
encountered in multiple ASCs over long periods of time ("Shamanism").
Whitley's discussion of rock art associated with female puberty rites
continues common pattems. Women are only granted visibility when
explicit and unambiguous evidence is available (Bass; Hays-Gilpin). Men
engaged in "heroic" activities more than women since (male) shamans
produced rock art and engaged in visions throughout their life while
women did so less frequently, perhaps only once. As Whitley states,
"These [vision quests/ASCs] were considered perilous and usually began
with a supematural test of worthiness and inner strength" ("By the Hunter"
262). Male rock art is more varied and complex, and hence more interesting, and represents the successful performance of hegemonic masculinity.
In terms of gender roles and divisions of labor, Whitley's shamanism is
not fundamentally different from hunting magic. Men are active parties
who take on dangerous tasks: traveling far away, whether in the mundane
or supernatural world; tackling dangerous creatures, whether through
hunting or encountering spirits in the other world; and making magic to
control their environment. I see no more wavering from the line of men as
active, heroic, and exciting, and women as passive and dull than in the
hunting magic literature. The hunt has merely become a symbolic or
supematural one. Women remain absent from rock art, both as subjects
and producers. The drudgery of Native women's lives manifested in Bird's
discussion of the Squaw is highlighted by their minimal relationship to
rock art: at best, women only produce rock art once in their lives, and
women's rock art sites contain only one repeated image in contrast to the
variety of imagery made by male shamans. Embedded in Whitley's model
is an ideology that Hays-Gilpin identifies in other discussions of shamanic
rock art: a Westem "worldview that stresses masculine activity and female
passivity" (68). However, the changes manifested in the shamanic model
are significant for the parallel to the contemporary crisis of masculinity,
specifically the shift from a material (subsistence) to a symbolic (socialspiritual) basis for hegemonic masculinity.
Shamanism and the Crisis of Masculinity
The role of shamanic rock art interpretation not only in offering a
particular model of hegemonic masculinity but in articulating the contemporary crisis in masculinity is particularly evident in Whitley's article "By
the Hunter, for the Gatherer," which I briefly discussed at the beginning of
Richard A. Rogers 99
this essay. Using this article, the homology underlying the shamanic
hypothesis and the discourse of the crisis of masculinity can be established
through parallels in implied standpoint, diction, and narrative structure.
Whitley's narrative begins prior to 1200 AD, when Numic subsistence
in the Cosos "was based on a generalized hunting-gathering strategy"
("By the Hunter" 259). "Men were solely responsible for big game
hunting" while women gathered plant foods and captured small game
(266). Meat obtained by men was communally shared, while women's
contributions were reserved for their immediate families. As a result,
women need not marry, but marriage was "necessary for a man to be
independent from other men" (266). Using specific regional evidence
ordered and completed with a generalized model of marriage and inequality in classless societies, Whitley posits a stable system of gender inequality linked to this subsistence pattern:
Although women were not necessarily considered inferior to
men, the prescribed Numic means for acquiring and maintaining
respect, prestige and ultimately authority essentially excluded
them from it. Prestige, for example, was measured by the number
of wives a person could obtain and hold, and discourse emphasized masculine traits and accomplishments, to the complete
exclusion of feminine activities and undertakings, as hallmarks
of success. Since success was defined exclusively in masculine
terms, causality was necessarily linked to male activities and
attributes, and feminine skills like gathering and child-rearing
were devalued. (266)
Around 1200 AD, however, "evidence suggests an increasing importance
in plant foods at the expense of hunting and game" (260). Men's loss of
their provider role "threatened" to increase their dependence on women
and decrease women's dependence on men. Paralleling the narrative of the
contemporary crisis, subsistence changes turn a previously "utilitarian
masculinity" (Faludi) into something economically insignificant and socially devalued.
The standpoint embedded in Whitley's repeated use of "threat" to
describe the challenge to the existing gender system is revealing. Why this
change would be a "threat" is not self-evident unless examined from the
point of view of the male role Whitley claims existed prior to the
subsistence change. Whitley indicates this change increased women's
100 Women's Studies in Communication
economic independence, and no reasoning is provided for why women
would perceive this as a threat. While much of Whitley's description is
couched in generic terms—e.g., "the threat to established gender relations" ("By the Hunter" 269)—the threat is to a social order which
Whitley clearly indicates favors men: "kinship, through the institution of
marriage, established a system of inequality that favored males over
females, and married men over bachelors" (265). Paralleling the contemporary crisis of masculinity, whether or not changes in gender roles and
ideologies constitute a "crisis" or "threat" depends on one's standpoint.
Whitley's foray into cognitive archaeology, reconstructing a "system of
beliefs and worldview" ("By the Hunter" 272), appears limited to masculine cognition and anxiety over the loss of male status, a perspective
enabled in part by the presumably masculinist bent of the historic ethnography from which he draws and, I would argue, the broader disciplinary
and social contexts in which his work is produced and circulated. For
example, Whitley describes the post-hunting-oriented Numic peoples as
"seed eating" (262) and reliant on "seeds and nuts" (258). These terms,
serving as a contrast to the earlier period of meat-eating, are perhaps
innocently denotative in archaeology but are extremely loaded within
contemporary USAmerican gender ideologies, with "meat" equating to
"manliness" and "seeds and nuts" equating to vegetarians, Californians,
hippies, and other feminized groups.^
The response to the "threat" of women's independence and men's loss
of status was a rise in shamanism, which Whitley argues is recorded in the
region's rock art. Noting a decrease in archaeological evidence for biggame hunting and an increase in rock art motifs such as male anthropomorphs, weapons, bighorn sheep, and hunting scenes, Whitley constructs
this "speculative" hypothesis: "The response to the threat to established
gender relations precipitated by the change in subsistence [...] was to
emphasize male—specifically, the male shaman's—control over women's
plant gathering activities" ("By the Hunter" 269-270). Specifically, "the
changing subsistence system in the western Great Basin appears to have
precipitated a dramatic increase in weather control shamanism" (269).
Given the ubiquity of bighorn sheep imagery, including hunted or killed
sheep, and ethnographic evidence indicating that killing a bighorn (mountain) sheep was a metaphor for bringing rain, Whitley emphasizes the role
of rain shamans in responding to the threat to gender relations:
Richard A, Rogers 101
Male shamans controlled women's plant gatbering [, , ,] not
because tbey controlled plants and tbe ritual symbols of women.
Instead, it was because of their relationship with an important
part of the world of men, tbe supernatural, from wbicb they
obtained poha [supernatural power], as symbolized metapborically by bunting mountain sheep; and due to their control of the
symbols of men—bunted game and weaponry, [,,,] The shaman
thus demonstrated his importance to women's subsistence activities by metaphorically killing a mountain sheep and by recording tbis supernatural act in rock art, as well as emphasizing tbe
continuing importance of male bunting, in general, by tbe selective use of tbese literal masculine symbols, (270)
In Whitley's narrative a tbreat to men's power in the mundane world
was countered by men's exclusive claim to supernatural power through tbe
role of the shaman and associated rock art, Tbe rock art, therefore, records
the successful performance of hegemonic masculinity in the face of a
crisis of masculinity: "Given their ownership of esoteric knowledge,
sbamans were advantaged at a fundamental level: their access to the
supernatural enabled tbem not only to cure (and cause) disease, and
tbereby exercise some social control tbrough fear, but more generally
enabled them to manipulate the workings of the universe to their own
benefit" ("By tbe Hunter" 270-271), Ecboing a begemonic masculinity
grounded in (betero)sexual virility, Whitley states that shamans had more
access to females "given their enhanced desirability to women" (270) due
to their social and spiritual power. For "Numic cultural logic specified that
it was [,,,] only through the acquisition of shamanistic power that men
could truly become political actors, and gain prestige and status in Numic
society" (268), Finally, "not only did tbe Numic sbaman control nature
tbrough his rain rituals, and tbereby directly aid tbe material reproduction
of society, but be also fostered the stability of Numic social relations [,,,]
by maintaining tbe establisbed gender asymmetry" (270), Shamanic masculinity restores the hunter's masculinity, maintains begemonic masculinity, and resolves tbe crisis of masculinity,
Wbitley's narrative of gender and subsistence cbange reflects and
engages the contemporary crisis of masculinity. Both Whitley's narrative
and that of the contemporary crisis focus on threats to the male provider
role. Changes in subsistence practices (work) tbreaten that role by destabilizing tbe basis of begemonic masculinity and by increasing women's
102 Women's Studies in Communication
participation and/or effectiveness in tbe realm of economics/subsistence,
Cbanges in economics/subsistence alter tbe performances constituting
begemonic masculinity, replacing pbysicaUbodily activities with mental/
symbolic ones. In the contemporary context, this relates to a presumed loss
of primitive masculinity and sexual virility by the blue collar due to sbifts
towards a wbite collar economy, as well as the feminization of the white
collar by corporations and bureaucracies.
Important for tbis analysis is not only the ways the narrative of the
crisis of contemporary masculinity parallels Whitley's narrative of the
Numic crisis in the Cosos, but also tbe responses to and solutions for tbe
crises. In contemporary terms, masculinist responses include a return to
primitive pbysicality, predatory sexuality, homosocial relations, and preindustrial spiritualities as well as the scapegoating of women, especially
those who enter into previously male-only realms and roles (Ashcraft and
Flores; Bederman; Churcbill; Ferber),
One clear parallel between responses to tbe contemporary crisis of
masculinity and the shamanic interpretation of rock art is the demonization of women. Regarding the exclusion of women from shamanism,
Whitley writes tbat "shamanic power, believed tbe key to all success and
autbority, was inimical to menstrual blood, tbereby effectively excluding
women from prestige" ("By the Hunter" 266), This does more than
reinforce a binary system of gender and perpetuate masculine dominance,
Whitley's consistent use of "inimical" to describe the relationship between
menstruation (an indicator of female essence) and shamanic power is
telling: women's essence is "the enemy o f not only spiritual power but,
as Wbitley makes clear, male prestige, Tbis offers a striking parallel to tbe
discourse of tbe contemporary crisis of masculinity, in wbicb women are
often identified and scapegoated as the cause of men's wounding, the loss
of their masculinity and of meaningful social and economic roles (Ashcraft and Flores; Faludi; Ferber; Fine et al,; Robinson), Insistence on an
almost exclusive relationship between men and rock art perpetuates tbe
demonization of women and tbe feminine, Tbe mere presence of females
in male realms is defined as malevolent, Whitley holds that if there were
female shamans (a woman in a man's realm), then they must have been
evil sorceresses; similarly, female symbols depicted in rock art (a male
realm), as in the vulva-forms present at many sites in the Great Basin,
indicate malevolent sorcery practiced by male sbamans. In otber words,
part of the resolution to the crisis is to (re)create an absolute barrier to
women's entrance into male spheres because part of tbe reason for the
Richard A. Rogers 103
crisis in the first place are such female intrusions (cf. Ashcraft and Flores).
Rock art is not only masculine, but functions as a fetish: the material trace
of the performance of exclusionary hegemonic power.
Another parallel is between Whitley's positing of shamanism as a
resolution to the crisis and the oft-noted connection between the crisis of
masculinity and the mythopoetic men's movement, which relies on various indigenous spiritualities to reconstruct manhood (Bederman; Ferber).
Spiritual roles seem to offer not only a justification other than economics/
subsistence, but in some cases license a "primitive" and virile masculinity.
Shamanism offers an important alternative, incorporating heterosexuality,
virility, and promiscuity/predation in a role defined by its esoteric, symbolic nature. Shamanism centers symbolic/social/spiritual work as central
to a virile hegemonic masculinity, offering a negotiation of the tension
over changes in work and masculinity from blue to white collar. This
preserves "primitive" sexuality and social prestige, offering one resolution
to the apparent contradictions between primitive and civilized masculinities and changing forms of work. Reclaiming the primitive is central to
Euro-American masculinity—however, this is less a physical primitivism
than a spiritual primitivism, (re)articulated to sexual potency, promiscuity,
and even predation.
Hunting magic emphasizes physical abilities while adding a magical/
ritual component. The shamanic model moves further away from physical
skills and material acts toward a masculinity defined in terms of symbolic
manipulation (i.e., "supematural power" and "esoteric knowledge"), and
in so doing positions (hetero)sexuality as central to Native masculinity.
Shamanism resonates more with contemporary anxieties over masculine
(hetero)sexuality in that it centers sexual virility both literally and metaphorically and highlights a link between the revival of masculinity and
sexual behavior that resists contemporary criticisms of male predation,
promiscuity, and harassment. A return to blue collar work may not seem
a viable solution to the felt feminization/emasculation which characterizes
the contemporary crisis, while a "revival" of male (hetero)sexual prowess
may be a way to resist the perceived "softening" of masculinity while
retaining the (limited and fragile) prestige of the white collar.
Whitley's model for rock art interpretation posits a male Native figure,
the shaman, which blends aspects of Bird's Doomed Warrior and Wise
Elder. The figure manifests the prowess and agency of the Warrior with the
spiritual knowledge of the Wise Elder, using the latter as means of
engaging in symbolic travel, communion, and combat in order to manifest
104 Women's Studies in Communication
the hegemonic masculinity of the former. The (hetero)sexuality of the
Warrior is highlighted as both a metaphor for the shaman's ritual power
and as a literal description of his behavior, with shamans' sexual potency
reframing the spiritual wisdom of the asexual Wise Elder. In relation to the
contemporary crisis, this offers a resolution to the tension between a
physical, bodily, sexual, and "primitive" masculinity and a "civilized"
masculinity of self-control, intellect, and will power. Insofar as the origin
of the contemporary crisis is often located in the changing nature of work,
as traditional blue collar masculinity gives way to a white collar version
(Bederman; Faludi), and as the prestige of white collar work itself is
problematized through corporate and bureaucratic feminization of the
workforce (Ashcraft and Flores; Faludi), the shamanic narrative, through
its homology with the narrative of the current crisis, promises social
prestige and sexual virility to the legions of emasculated paper pushers and
corporate lackeys (including academics and archaeologists) that make up
the narrative of the middle-class crisis of masculinity. Once again. Native
American cultures are used as a screen for projecting Euro-American
cultural tensions and as a resource to (at least vicariously) resolve such
tensions. Racial and cultural differences as well as historical distance
enables the displaced expression of middle-class male fantasies and resolutions to the crisis of masculinity while obscuring the underlying discursive homology.
Conclusion
The shamanic and hunting magic models both rely on binary oppositions: male/female, active/passive, sacred/secular. Native men are not only
active, but enhance their physical activity through spiritual/magical activity such as rock art. Native women are not only passive, but live lives of
drudgery focused on the material actions of processing gathered foods,
birthing, and raising children. Native women's lives are unenhanced by
spiritual or symbolic activity, making them faceless Squaws with little to
offer contemporary Westerners. Native men, in contrast, possess positive
physical attributes, skills for survival in the material world, and special
insight into the spiritual world gained through shamanic journeys and
spirit helpers. For Westerners looking to compensate for what is lacking in
contemporary existence (e.g., physical survival challenges, a close relationship to nature, and spiritual wisdom), the image of Native American
Richard A. Rogers 105
men, but not women, in rock art studies offers a rich resource for
appropriation and projection.
The shift in masculinity from the hunting magic of the 1960s to the
shamanism of the 1990s offers insight into changes and tensions in
Euro-American masculinity. While the images of men in both models are
consistent with hegemonic masculinity—they hold to a strict gender
duality, posit men as active agents, and value men's over women's
contributions (Trujillo)—there are significant differences. First, while both
emphasize the supernatural, there is a shift from hunting magic as supportive of material subsistence to shamanism as a source of social power
which compensates for a loss of status due to decreased contributions to
material subsistence. Such a shift parallels economic trends often cited as
central to the crisis of masculinity in late twentieth century USAmerica:
the displacement of men from their role as breadwinners, the move from
blue to white collar occupations, and attendant shifts in definitions of
masculine competence and power. Second, the hunting magic model
highlights men as hunters and ritual practitioners but does not explicitly
foreground sexuality. Whitley's shamanic model not only makes male
heterosexuality a metaphoric trait of shamanic practice, power, and ideology, it posits heterosexual promiscuity/predation as a trait of the shaman
himself. The image of the shaman (re)defines sexual virility as linked to
symbolic/spiritual power, not physical strength. Male sexual prowess, be
it desirable or dangerous, is (re)centered as a key element of hegemonic
masculinity, as is the ability to effectively use symbols.
The shamanic hypothesis for Great Basin rock art, therefore, can not
only be understood as paralleling the contemporary crisis in (white)
masculinity; shamanism also offers a model for its resolution. In this light,
this analysis of masculinity in rock art interpretation suggests a third
Euro-American model of Native American masculinity: the Shaman. This
image combines aspects of the Doomed Warrior and Wise Elder but is not
reducible to either. Neither of these existing images alone is sufficient for
resolving the crisis of primitive/civilized masculinity (cf. Ashcraft and
Flores; Bederman). The Doomed Warrior offers a physical/sexual vitality
addressing a felt lack in contemporary white collar masculinity, but such
a physicality is no longer viable, as reflected in the Warrior's status as
"doomed"—physically strong but structurally impotent (Bird, "Savage").
No viable space for a purely physical masculinity exists in the modern
world for middle-class whites or Indians. The Wise Elder, while offering
a positive portrayal of spiritual wisdom, offers no compensation for
106 Women's Studies in Communication
emasculated idea workers in search of a vigorously sexualized masculinity. The Shaman's mystical power and sexual virility revitalize hegemonic
masculinity through the displacement of male power and virility from the
physical to the social and spiritual while retaining the centrality of male
heterosexual potency.^ Indigenous spirituality is positioned as a link
between the "lost foundation" of masculinity—the primitive, sexualized
body—and masculinity's manifestation in symbolic performances. Addressing economic changes may be beyond the power of individual men,
but a vicarious or behavioral engagement of an unabashed sexual potency
may seem more workable as well as gratifying.
Identification of this particular "strategy for encompassing a situation"
(Burke 109), therefore, contributes to understandings of the contemporary
crisis of masculinity, clarifies one possible function of the androcentric
representation of Native Americans, and highlights the mutual vulnerability of seemingly unrelated but nevertheless homologous discourses. Homologies can not only enhance the appeal of particular texts/discourses
and shape perceptions and evaluations through the principle of vulnerability (Brummett); they can also assist the operation of cultural projections
and the "working through" of cultural tensions via tropes such as the
primitive. Specifically, academic discourses are not only vulnerable to
homological influences, but the dominance or acceptance of particular
theories and models may be less a result of empirical validity than of their
homology to contemporary conditions, ideologies, and standpoints. The
rise and fall of different hypotheses may well be linked to their ability to
effectively resonate with and respond to contemporary cultural dynamics.
Since an individual "text calls attention to the particular individuation of
form that it is rather than the form itself (Brummett 20), the role of
discursive homologies can be easily overlooked, obscuring important
ideological affiliations and rhetorical operations.
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Notes
'The rock art literature distinguishes between "prehistoric" and "historic" periods
in indigenous North American cultures, reflecting major cultural changes resulting from
contact with Europeans, I avoid this usage when possible insofar as the distinction is
ethnocentric, graphocentric, and complicit in both (neo)colonialism and the discourse of
the primitive,
^A complete review of the major areas and trends in rock art studies is beyond the
scope of this essay. Recent rock art studies include site descriptions, dating techniques,
spatial analyses, ethnography and ethnohistory, aesthetic and semiotic analyses, phenomenological/impressionist accounts, applications of Jungian and other universalizing
models, approaches to preservation and restoration, and many other topics and approaches. The literature is produced by academics (primarily anthropologists and
archaeologists), land managers and other professionals, avocationalists, and other "rock
art enthusiasts," and as a result encompasses a wide range of paradigms, methods, forms
of reasoning, evidence, and styles,
'My argument that knowledge produced from archaeological and anthropological
epistemologies/ideologies embodies and perpetuates cultural biases can be compared to
Martin's analysis of scientific descriptions of the human reproductive process. She
demonstrates that scientific findings are shaped by cultural narratives and metaphors,
reproducing traditional gender stereotypes even in the face of contradictory evidence,
"My intent is not to single out Whitley to criticize him for "personal" projections
110 Women's Studies in Communication
and gender biases, I interpret the patterns and issues I identify in his published works as
reflections of the larger cultural and disciplinary contexts and discourses in which
he operates,
^In her discussion of west Texas rock art, Bass indicates a past practice of
assuming all anthropomorphic images are male unless specific female indicators
are present,
^For an extended discussion of the symbolism of meat and vegetarianism as linked
to gender, see Adams,
'in this sense, the Shaman as outlined here has important connections to other rock
art imagery, such as "Kokopelli" the hump-backed flute player, the ubiquitous icon
which has largely replaced the howling coyote and saguaro cactus as the mascot of the
Southwest and whose meanings also cue both spirituality and sexual potency/predation
(Rogers),